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Should NYC pensions pay for universal child care? Brannan pitches $500M investment.
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Brigid Bergin
Published Apr 24, 2025
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Brigid Bergin
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Brigid Bergin
Published Apr 24, 2025
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New York City comptroller candidate Justin Brannan has a plan to reinvest a $500 million piece of the city's multibillion-dollar pension funds — and use it to pay for universal child care.
Brannan does not claim his plan would achieve this increasingly popular policy goal on its own. But similar to how the city comptroller’s office has been used to increase investment in affordable housing, Brannan said he would use the office to expand and support the city’s child care infrastructure.
“ The two main factors to the city's affordability crisis now are the lack of affordable housing and the lack of quality, affordable child care,” said Brannan, who represents parts of south Brooklyn in the City Council and chairs the body's finance committee.
Now, he’s running against Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine in an increasingly competitive Democratic primary for city comptroller.
Similar to the marquee Democratic mayoral race on the top of the ballot, where nearly all the candidates say that the city should do more to expand child care, both of the leading comptroller candidates agree the city must achieve universal child care, an increasingly salient issue among primary voters. But experts who reviewed Brannan’s proposal told Gothamist that if implemented, it would represent the first time the tools of the city comptroller’s office would be harnessed to fund child care.
“ There's been some use of city pension fund investments to expand housing development and and affordable housing development in New York City. This is an extension of that,” said economist James Parrott, a senior adviser and fellow at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs. “To my understanding and knowledge, it would be the first time that somebody has proposed doing this in the child care area.”
Brannan’s approach aims to bring in new revenue to pay for universal child care through a proposed $500 million investment spread over eight years. The sum would account for less than 2% of the city’s $284 billion in funds paid to retired teachers, police officers, firefighters and other city workers.
Brannan said those investments would go into a series of pillars. The first would be a new Child Care Property Fund that would be used to help investors — including the city — purchase, renovate or build new child care facilities. His office would also sell “social impact bonds” to private philanthropists or corporate foundations tied to specific early childhood outcomes, which the city only repays if those outcomes are achieved.
The office would also invest in large infrastructure funds that support large-scale real estate projects, specifically in neighborhoods where more than three children compete for every licensed child care slot.
While the plan would need approval from the pension board's trustees, Parrott said the strategy is fairly low-risk.
“ I think you can make a good case that investing in child care infrastructure and facilities in New York City is a pretty good bet and serves a very well-defined market need,” Parrott said. He noted that although the investment was unlikely to deliver double-digit returns, “it's a pretty safe and responsible investment.”
The overall plan would target an ongoing crisis in New York City. Families with children under age 6 are 40% likelier to leave New York, driven by affordability challenges including the lack of affordable child care, according to analysis from the Fiscal Policy Institute.
The city also takes an economic hit from those departures. A 2022 report from the nonprofit New York City Economic Development Corporation found the city loses $23 billion in economic output annually because of people dropping out of the workforce to care for children. Alternatively, several studies have shown that every $1 spent on early childhood education and care can yield more than $8 in returns through increases in earnings and tax revenues.
Rebecca Bailin, an organizer who leads New Yorkers United for Child Care, a nonprofit that has been successfully rallying parents to push lawmakers on universal child care policies, said proposals like Brannan’s are necessary to buttress the city against potential cuts in federal funding from the current Trump administration.
“ I think it makes total sense that a comptroller's office would be invested in universal child care,” Bailin said, “and you're seeing it from both major candidates, Justin Brannan and Mark Levine.”
In December, Levine released a report on the need for universal child care through the Manhattan borough president’s office. The report makes the case for the economic need for the programs and proposes policy solutions, like establishing a new department to oversee early childhood education and intervention services.
Brannan said his plan would also harness the full power of the comptroller’s office to audit all agencies that provide child care services, with the goal of improving service delivery, cutting costs and reducing bureaucracy.
Along with the Department of Education and the Administration for Children’s Services, there are at least seven other city agencies that play a role in the delivery of child care and early childhood education. Brannan said the city also needs to make sure its honoring its contracts to providers.
“ The bottom line is the city needs to pay its damn bills on time across the board,” Brannan said.
He made the comments during an interview at the Williamsburg-based child care center Nuestros Niños on Wednesday. The five-decade-old center has faced increasing threats this year after the city made the sudden announcement in January that it was ending the site’s city-owned lease there — and then temporarily reversed that decision after public outcry.
Brannan joined local Councilmember Jennifer Gutiérrez for a tour of the facility on Wednesday. Gutiérrez, who fought to save Nuestros Niños, is the lead sponsor of a City Council bill to provide universal child care and increase the pay for child care workers; Brannan is a co-sponsor.
“ When I got elected, I was pregnant and I didn't have a plan for child care,” Gutiérrez said. “I think I just thought like the village would surely come and like, help raise my child. And then when it came back time to go to work, I was like, ‘I don't actually have any options.”
Ingrid Matias Chungata, executive director of Nuestros Niños, said her programs are still waiting to be reimbursed for services dating back to last July. She said the city has been working with her team to move the payment process along, but she continues to have to take out loans to pay her staff.
Those ongoing delays and the uncertainty of Nuestros Niños’ future make Matias Chungata wary of talk about universal child care. As someone with a background in finance, she said, she needs to see hard numbers to know the city is committed to maintaining quality programs while increasing investment to new ones.
“ The day to day, it takes money,” Matias Chungata said. “Right now, we don't get enough.”
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new york city
Politics
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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